Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 107, Issue 43, Pages 18243-18250Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1012933107
Keywords
abduction; deduction; induction; logic; rationality
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [SES 0844851]
- Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie
- Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences [0844851] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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To be rational is to be able to reason. Thirty years ago psychologists believed that human reasoning depended on formal rules of inference akin to those of a logical calculus. This hypothesis ran into difficulties, which led to an alternative view: reasoning depends on envisaging the possibilities consistent with the starting point-a perception of the world, a set of assertions, a memory, or some mixture of them. We construct mental models of each distinct possibility and derive a conclusion from them. The theory predicts systematic errors in our reasoning, and the evidence corroborates this prediction. Yet, our ability to use counterexamples to refute invalid inferences provides a foundation for rationality. On this account, reasoning is a simulation of the world fleshed out with our knowledge, not a formal rearrangement of the logical skeletons of sentences.
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